OPEN SOURCE INDIA TECH DAYS '09

Hi everybody..!

This post is to share my experience at the Open Source India Tech Days ‘09, actually i was there for the last two days but missed the first day ( not being able to bunk my internal assesment tests) I really enjoyed my time there at the Chennai Trade Center Hall. I attended the second and third day of this big event, so i will tell you about what happened there on those two days.

On 13th March ‘09 i was really amazed seeing so many college students at the OSI Days hall. The first speaker on that day was Mr. Narendra Bhandari of Intel

He was telling us about the Mobile Technologies and its future. He enlightened us with some knowledge about the Moblin (mobile tech from Intel) he also explained about the importance for opensource in todays Business. Well i did enjoyed his speech. The next speaker on that day was Mr. Rakshat Hooja, IDA Systems who actually introduced us with the openmokku, an opensource mobile platform based on GNU/Linux. Then Mr. Thilak Kumar of Wind River, (google’s android specialist) talked about the opensource mobile platforms and their importance in todays world. He also added some informations about the latest Handsets. And they had a nice pannel discussion expressing their overall thoughts about the opensource technologies.

The audience out there really enjoyed their speech and started shooting a lot of questions which was answered by the pannel member untiringly

At the same time concurently, IBM’s workshop was going on at the nearby hall ( i was not able to attend it)

Then i saw a lot of Stalls out there, The Chennai LUG team had a stall , IBM , Lynus Academy, NRCFOSS & CDAC, IIT Mumbai and lots more (i dont remember well )

Then the last day of the OSI Techdays i.e 14th March ‘09

The first speaker on stage was a 14 year old kid ( well i should not address him as a kid because he possesses a lot of knowledge more than college students do)

He was talking about his “Falling in love with FOSS, he shared all his experiences telling us how he made his hands dirty playing around Linux and the so called “Open Source Softwares”.

The next speaker was Mr. Gautam Sinha, CTO Times Business Solution Limited. He shared a lot of his company experience using FOSS ( well not about his commercial facts) He told about why the Open Source is Consumed by the IT Management.. There was a lot of people asking questions to him about the in and arounds of the IT industries and Mr. Sinha provided a better solution to all of them.

Then there was a hilarious pannel discussion by the Chennai LUG people, talking about different linux distros (Fedora, Debian, Mandriva, Opensuse,Gentoo, Ubutu & BOSS ).. Mr. Bharathi introduced Chennai LUG to the newbies and as soon as the discussion started they were about to start a flame war as to ” Which is the best Distro” Some how they managed to end the discussion Mr.Bharathi said ” Just Try what ever Distro is in your hand, and dont see which is the best” because every Distro has a similar base but one or two features may differ.. So we Audience had a nice time

Then Mr. Venkatesh kumar gave a speech introducing IBM’s Lotus Symphony ( which is an office utility collaborated with openoffice, build on Eclipse )

Then soon after the lunch Mr.Akarsh Simha had a interesting speech about the Desktop productivity tools… He was telling about all the things that he loved in using the KDE desktop environment… he told about many interesting features about the kde desktop which made me to try kde that evening (well i havent used kde but using gnome for more than 7months)

Then Mr.Bharathi of the Chennai LUG gave an interesting speech figuring out the importance of the LUG’s in India, and what are the roles played by the lug’s to help out linux newbies. He also told about the mailing list, and how people communicate inside the community via the mailing list.

People were amazed hearing about the activities of our Chennai LUG, that they were quering people at the LUG stalls to know more about the LUG’s

Then Mr. Srivathsa of Dell, Mr Anil of Microsoft, Ashok krish of TCS and Mr. Shrinivasan of Cloudversity had a pannel discussion about the Career trends in FOSS, which was very much useful for the students( both school and college)

Then Mr. Redhaun had a hilarious talk about the opensource business as well as opensource politics, He also shared about his experience with foss , and the story of Compiere and Adempiere (an Open Source ERP) He also asked people to contribute to his projects.. He stated himself as a tech-mafia (thats the jovial part of his presentation)

Then Mr. Ashok of TCS was talking about Where and why Foss is used.. He also gave ideas for the students on how to decide before starting your career with foss.

Then Mr. Lim kin chew, SIM university was talking about the FOSS in ASIA

Thats how the OSI Tech Days came to end. We must actually thank LFY for making up such a essential fest at the right time.

We also hope to have these kind of programmes to be held often around chennai. So I really enjoyed the two days at the OSI Tech Days ( Opensource Festival)

If you also attended the OSI Tech Days programme or want to share something on it. Please feel free to post your comment below.